Excerpt
by Feilyn
Summary: In which Sasuke is blind and Naruto is...well, Naruto. 'Eureka' 'I do not'


_This is another mission: insane prompt. The prompt was Eureka, and after saying it out loud a few times, I got this idea._

_Hope ya like it!_

xXx

Everything had changed.

Sakura had somehow turned into a kick-ass kunoichi in his absence. Sasuke would never admit it and he probably didn't have a right to it, but he was damn proud of her.

Kakashi had the Mangekyou, although he still refused to tell anyone how he had attained it without a) being an Uchiha and b) killing his best friend.

Naruto had absorbed the Kyuubi. The whole thing was so monumental that Sasuke could barely get his head around it. His friend's will had overpowered that of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.

As for Sasuke…

He was blind.

It turned out that a bloodline limit could only take a certain amount of inbreeding before it started to fail, and it failed with Sasuke. But unlike Itachi, he hadn't made the Sharingan the be all and end all of his techniques. He had lived. Itachi had died.

Of course, Sasuke had tried to kill himself immediately afterwards, but Naruto had arrived in time to put a stop to that. Then followed a year of taking turns to pummel each other into the ground. Two years had passed since Tsunade had deemed him fit for society and he'd spent most of them training his other senses to compensate for his blindness.

"Sasuke! Are you even listening to me?"

He turned his head in the direction of Naruto's voice. "No."

Sasuke sighed, letting Naruto angry rant about what a bastard he was wash over him. Same thing, different day although he knew well enough that he'd miss it if it were gone.

"Are you done?" he asked finally, just barely resisting a smile at the thought of the indignant look that Naruto had to be wearing.

"Sasuke! _Listen!_"

Ouch. Sometimes sensitive hearing wasn't all it was cracked up to be, especially not when Naruto reached octaves that high.

Sasuke waved his hand nonchalantly, taking care to hit his friend over the head. At least, it was meant to be over the head but the blond moved at the last second and got a hand to the face.

"Oi!"

"Do you ever not speak with exclamation marks?"

"Che." A pause. "…sometimes. Like right now! Hah!"

Sasuke considered pointing out that Naruto had just ruined that sentence for himself, then tossed the notion away. It would never end if he did. "What were you saying, dobe?" he asked instead. He would be able to drone it out again after the first seconds of nausea.

"What? Oh, right! So, it sort of just _clicked_, and I was like…uh…I was like…"

"Eureka?" Sasuke suggested dryly after listening to Naruto struggle for a few minutes.

"Teme! I do not!"

Sasuke manfully resisted the urge to bang his head against the nearest tree. He then spent the next ten minutes trying to explain the concept of eureka to Naruto, who manfully resisted understanding.

"So what you're saying is that when you _get_ something, you have to tell someone else that they smell because they didn't get it, yeah?"

He opened his mouth to correct the other jounin then shut it, shaking his head. "You know what, Naruto? Don't worry about it."

There was a tiny sigh that sounded like thunder to Sasuke's sensitive ears. "I'm reeking this, aren't I?"

"I said don't worry about it, didn't I dobe?" He threw the insult in there to distract Naruto. The only thing allowed to make the blond feel stupid was him.

"Don't call me dobe, teme!"

Worked like a charm.

"Stop acting like a dead last, Uzumaki, and I'll stop treating you like one," he shot over his shoulder as he picked up the pace. Naruto's whining continued even as the blond fell into step with him. They were headed towards Tsunade's office to be briefed on an emergency mission that supposedly only the four man cell of Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura and Sai could complete. In reality, it was probably because the team had recently destroyed a number of large buildings in the Village and Tsunade wanted them out of her hair.

Well, it had really been the other three who had destroyed the buildings – Sasuke had had his hands full dodging their attacks, let alone attacking back. Let alone finding time to destroy buildings along the way.

Sasuke could _almost_ keep up with Naruto the way he used to, although there was no way he'd ever be able to beat the other jounin again. Sakura and Sai he could take by themselves; together he could hold his own. But add Naruto to the mix and it was all he could to defend himself.

This didn't sting the way it used to, though. Sasuke liked to think it was because of the way he'd matured, but was honest enough with himself to know that it was probably because even Pein of the Akatsuki couldn't stand against the power of the Kyuubi controlled by Naruto's iron-clad will.

The thing was, that while many would, in fact _had_, killed for that sort of power, Sasuke knew Naruto hated it. Loathed his pupils that were now permanent slits, the way he cut his tongue on his canines when he talked too fast and how the marks on his face were now deeper, wider and very obviously unnatural.

"Sasuke." An arm curled around his waist as a light voice drifted to his ears. Sakura. Reaching up, she dropped a soft kiss on his cheek.

He sent a smile in the general direction of her head and slung an arm around where he assumed her shoulders to be. Naruto and Sakura were the only people he smiled for, although he'd dole out a Sai-type grin if people started getting on his back. That, more than any scowl he'd ever worn, sent people running for the hills – or Tsunade to lock him back up in the mental ward.

"Sakura," he replied quietly. They didn't need anything else.

Naruto's cry of agony nearly split Sasuke's skull in half. He had three kunai in his hand and his sword ready to draw before he realised there was no enemy.

Sakura started to laugh, detaching herself from Sasuke as Naruto dove at the Uchiha.

"What are you doing, dobe?" Sasuke asked, exasperated. It was hard to tell where Naruto was coming from, he moved so fast. But Sasuke also moved fast and the blond's weakness had always been how loud he was. Sasuke sidestepped easily and hit his friend in the back, sending him crashing to the ground.

"Hn. Dobe."

"You said you and Sakura-chan weren't dating!" Naruto howled.

Sasuke blinked, an ingrained reaction to surprise even if it didn't affect him in the slightest. "What?"

"Naruto," Sakura sighed. The shifting sounds indicated she'd hauled him back up. "Sasuke and I _aren't _dating."

"Butbutbut—"

Sasuke rolled his eyes – another ingrained action – and reached out, managing to snag Naruto's hand. He tugged the blond towards him and pressed chapped lips to his cheek.

Sakura burst out laughing and for a moment Sasuke wished fervently for his sight back so he could see the look on Naruto's face. He ignored that thought, like he ignored many thoughts and instead slung his arm back around Sakura and just barely missed tripping over a stunned Naruto.

"Hey dobe," he tossed over his shoulder as they started walking.

"Eh?"

"Eureka."

"I do no – wait, what?"

Sasuke smiled. "Think about it."

_That should keep him busy for the next couple of weeks._

xXx

_I think…probably the ending is a little ambiguous. I am alluding to a sort of love triangle here, but more this was meant to be just an excerpt of life as Sasuke. I don't know. I like it :)_


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